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Let me reiterate something I have noted in the past—this, to justify my resorting to the creation and promulgation of a list— which I have also said before, is the main trick of lazy journalists.

Uh where was I?

Oh yeah, if you are familiar either with European literary journals or the late lamented Wisława Szymborska’s splendid little tome Non-REquired Reading you are aware that those journals list books that they receive— a number usually far greater than can be reviewed (or that fussy critics would deign to comment on). Seems like a useful thing to list, right?

Since I am exactly in that position I am pleased to occasionally publish an idiosyncratic and arbitrary enumeration of recently received books such as the one that follows.The arbitrary part of this public service ia the links that attach to some of the book noted. Some because i have spoken to the author—some because I have previously commented on something to do with said tome.And some links because, well, it’s the right thing to do.

David Hockney: The Biography by Christopher Simon Sykes (Doubleday)

Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World by Jay Nordlinger (Encounter Books)

The Short American Century: A Postmortem by Andrew Bacevich(Editor) (Harvard University Press)

Atget by John Szarkowski, Eugène Atget (Photographer) (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The 50 Funniest American Writers*: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion by Andy Borowitz ( Library of America)

Nixon’s Court: His Challenge to Judicial Liberalism and Its Political Consequences by Kevin J. McMahon (University Of Chicago Press)

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (Knopf)

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack: A Novel by ( Little, Brown and Company)

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx by Wayne Koestenbaum(University of California Press)

Timebomb:A Thriller by Gerald Seymour (Overlook)

Any Day Now: A Novel by Terry Bisson (Overlook)

Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind by J.-H. Rosny, Daniele Chatelain (Translator, Contributor), George Slusser (Translator, Contributor) (Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction)

Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus by Baseball Prospectus The, Steven Goldman (Editor) (Basic Books)

A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson (University of Illinois Press)